If the ABS guts Australia’s time use survey, women’s work will count for little

Childcare is probably Australia’s largest industry, most of it unpaid.

We know this because of Australian Bureau of Statistics time use surveys. Since 1992 these surveys have recorded what thousands of Australians say they do with their time in diaries kept for 48 hours.

But if the Bureau of Statistics proceeds with its current plans for scaling down the survey we soon won’t be able to tell.

Australia has not only led the world in recording time use, but also in recording simultaneous activities – what Australians do when they multitask.

In 1997 the survey found that whereas the average time spent on childcare as a main activity was about two hours per day, the average when simultaneous activities were taken into account was closer to seven hours per day. Among the simultaneous activities were preparing meals and washing clothes.

Now the bureau wants. . . .to exclude simultaneous activities.

This means we will no longer get a good read on the total amount of childcare and other domestic activities we are doing. Our surveys will also no longer be directly comparable to those of other countries.

Time-use expert Lyn Craig of the University of Melbourne says that without the contextual data the bureau proposes to leave out we won’t be able to capture the full dimensions of care work, including whether the breakdown by gender is changing.

Those who specialise in time-use research say the bureau’s current plan is destined to fail. There’s a good deal of women’s unpaid work it won’t capture.

In 1988 New Zealand economist Marilyn Waring wrote a famous book called Counting for Nothing about how women and the environment were invisible in policymaking.

If the bureau proceeds as planned, it will take us back toward those days.

Source: If the ABS guts Australia’s time use survey, women’s work will count for little

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